Chapter 66 — The Ship That Never Looks Back

Traces In The Dark

The air near the ship's axis of rotation had a different quality than the Root Layer, lighter, thinner, causing Khe Lam to adjust her steps as gravity gradually decreased as she moved through the technical corridor leading to the secondary control station near the Primeval Core. She carried her standard toolbox, her access certificate clearly clipped to the chest of her uniform, everything as a normal routine safety valve check — on the outside.

The first security checkpoint accepted her certificate without asking further questions. The Guard soldier on duty just glanced at the identity confirmation screen and waved for her to pass, his eyes clearly revealing the boredom of a long, unremarkable shift. The second station was more thorough, asking her to explain the purpose of the inspection and compare it with the assignment schedule approved by Vu Khac Registration, but finally allowed her to pass after a few tense minutes of waiting.

When the last sealed door opened, revealing a narrow sub-checkpoint compartment filled with old but still carefully maintained equipment, Khe Lam let out a long breath, the tension in her shoulders loosening a little. She immediately got down to the real work — checking the safety valve according to proper procedure, because she knew her every action could be reviewed later if any doubts arose.

Bach Van appeared ten minutes later, wearing a navigator's uniform, holding a backup navigation device as the official reason for his presence in the area. "The simulation practice just ended." He spoke quietly, once they were both sure no one else was within earshot. "I have about forty minutes before they realize I've been absent longer than necessary."

"Enough time." Khe Lam replied, leading him through a side door that only specially certified engineers knew how to open, leading into the old equipment storage area located next to the Primordial Core, where she had first discovered Lam Chu coordinates many months ago.

The room still retained the haunting stillness she remembered from the first time—racks containing ancient data modules, indicator lights blinking slowly like the breathing of a machine that had lived for two hundred and forty-seven years. But this time, Khe Lam was not looking for coordinates. She looked for something more human, more concrete — any sign that someone else had stood in this very place, outside the scope of official business.

She started from the metal surfaces near the entrance, shining the flashlight along the welds and protective panels, looking for small, familiar swirls. There's nothing there. She moved deeper into the room, checking each rack, each sub-control panel, while Bach Van stood guard near the door, occasionally glancing at the clock on the locator.

"This." She whispered, after nearly twenty minutes of searching, stopping in front of a small, almost forgotten sub-panel in the farthest corner of the room, which it looked like no one had touched in years except for the minimum required maintenance. A protective cover had been removed and reinstalled, not as perfectly as a properly trained mechanic would do, but cleverly enough to not be noticeable to anyone who wasn't really paying attention.

Bach Van walked over and looked over her shoulder. "What's unusual?"

"This panel was recently removed." Khe Lam said, her fingers tracing the edge of the metal plate, feeling the abrasion that was different from the rest of the device. "Not many years ago like most of this area. Much more recent — perhaps just a few months, based on the degree of oxidation on the cut edges."

She carefully removed the panel, revealing an old circuit board underneath — not an essential part of the main navigation system, but a side branch connected to the local environmental monitoring system, which monitors radiation levels and the status of nearby reactors. On the surface of the circuit board, near a connector that had been cleaned and tightened more carefully than the rest, she saw it—a small swirl, with a dot in the middle, faintly etched but unmistakable.

Khe Lam's hands trembled. "Bach Van, look at this."

He bent down, looked closely at the engraving under the flashlight, then looked at her, immediately understanding its meaning. "She was here."

"Not just here." Khe Lam said, her voice trembling with a mixture of hope and new fear. "She repaired this device. This is a radiation monitoring circuit — if it failed, no one other than a senior certified engineer would know about it, and wouldn't be prioritized for repair until it caused a more serious problem. That means she had access to the area herself, not through official channels, and spent time fixing something no one had assigned her to fix, just because..." She paused, looking more closely at how the circuit was repaired. "Just because she realized it needed to be fixed, and she couldn't let it break, even if no one knew she did it."

Bach Van looked around the room with new eyes, as if trying to imagine that woman, alone, sneaking into the most heavily guarded area of the ship, not to search for a secret, but to repair something she believed was important, even though no one had assigned that task to her, even though being discovered could bring consequences more serious than anything Khe Lam had ever faced.

"Why did you take such a risk?" He asked, not in doubt, just simply not understanding.

"Because that's who she is, maybe." Khe Lam said, gently touching the engraved mark again before replacing the protective cover in its original position, not wanting to leave any signs that someone had discovered it. "A mechanic cannot bear to see something broken without fixing it, even if fixing it means taking great risks. Perhaps that is how she continues to live, to continue to feel useful, even when pushed out of all official systems."

Suddenly, a noise rang out from the hallway outside—the steady, rhythmic footsteps of a patrol, getting closer. Bach Van froze, his hand raised to signal silence. Khe Lam quickly packed up his tools, closed the auxiliary control panel as if no one had ever touched it, and extinguished the flashlight.

They stood still in the darkness, their hearts pounding, listening to footsteps approaching and then stopping just outside the door they had just passed through. A deep voice spoke, conversing briefly with another voice over the communication device, mentioning the periodic inspection of the old equipment storage area according to the new schedule after Directive Twelve. Then the footsteps moved further, farther and farther, until completely silent.

"We need to get out of here now." Bach Van whispered, his voice tense. "If they had started to periodically check this area more frequently, our window of opportunity to get back would have been increasingly narrow."

Khe Lam nodded, even though her heart was still heavy with the recent discovery, not wanting to leave when she felt her mother's presence here closer than ever. But she knew Bach Van was right. They left the room the same way, returned to the sub-checkpoint, completed the unfinished official work before leaving the area according to procedure, without leaving any unusual signs for those who might review her shift records later.

On the way back, Khe Lam held Bach Van's hand tightly, her mind was still in that small room, with the swirling mark on the old circuit board. Her mother is not only alive. She was continuing a silent war of her own, the only way she could — keeping what she could reach going, even when pushed out of the light, even when no one thanked her for it.

"You are nearby, Bach Van." She said, once they were out of the danger zone, her voice carrying a new certainty. "Closer than I ever dared hope. I can feel it."

Bach Van didn't respond right away, just squeezed her hand tighter as they passed the last checkpoint, returning the access certificate to the soldier on duty with a calm, well-practiced smile. Only when they were far away from the spindle area, back in the familiar hallway leading to the Root Level, did he speak, his voice thoughtful. "If she's still visiting this area, however infrequently, it means she hasn't given up watching the Primeval Core, even after nineteen years. That makes me think of another possibility — perhaps you're not just hiding, Khe Lam. Perhaps you're waiting for something, or preparing for something, in your own way."

"What are you waiting for?" Khe Lam asked, a new worry creeping into her voice.

"I do not know." He admitted. "But someone who risked her life to fix an unassigned radiation monitoring circuit, after nineteen years of living outside all official systems, wasn't someone who had given up. It was someone who was still keeping watch, for some reason she deemed more important than her own safety."

Khe Lam remained silent, letting those words penetrate her mind the rest of the way, wondering if the mother she had never met was, in some way, also waiting for her, as she had been waiting for her for twenty years of her life.